By Osman Ulagay (vol. 5, no. 11 of the Turkey Analyst) 

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is demonstrating an unwillingness to leave any room in society – be it in the public administration, in the universities, or in the business world, to those who are not its supporters. Although the AKP enjoys broad support, religiously inspired social conservatism nonetheless alienates a substantial part of society, provoking  serious tensions in the process. One could thus argue that Turkey is approaching a critical moment.  What Turkey needs at this critical juncture is a political alternative that transcends the divides of society and seeks to reconcile differences instead of exacerbating them.  

By Richard Weitz (vol. 5, no. 10 of the Turkey Analyst)

Relations between the governments of Iraq and Turkey continue to deteriorate. For now the animosities remain primarily personal, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki engaged in a vicious feud with both Iraqi and Turkish leaders he considers his enemies. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other Turkish officials have focused their criticisms on the Iraqi Prime Minister, and have sought to uphold the rights of Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Sunnis without antagonizing Iraq’s Shiites. But these personal tensions reflect real differences between Ankara and Baghdad over the need for democratic governments in Iraq and Syria. And these divergences are in turn reinforced by ethnic and sectarian tensions as well as a competition between latent neo-Ottoman tendencies and Iranian ambitions to fill the vacuum created by the power vacuum in the Middle East resulting from the Western withdrawal and Egyptian paralysis.

By Halil M. Karaveli (vol. 5, no. 10 of the Turkey Analyst)

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently expressed allegiance to “one nation, one flag, one religion, one state.” Indeed, the Turkish republic recognizes only “one religion”, Sunni Islam, as the basis of the nation. Erdoğan is nonetheless anxious to preserve the image that he has successfully cultivated as the benefactor of the numerically insignificant non-Muslim minorities in Turkey. What the ruling Sunni conservatives have much greater difficulty in reconciling themselves to, is that Turkey, although nominally “99 percent Muslim” is far from being homogenously Sunni Muslim.